Day: August 19, 2010

Rex Reed Calls Mao’s Last Dancer a “Masterpiece” + New Clip from Film

By Jason Apuzzo. We want to keep people pumped here at Libertas about seeing Bruce Beresford’s extraordinary and courageous new film, Mao’s Last Dancer.  We’ll be showing you a variety of clips from the film, including this excerpt above for today.  It features the lovely Joan Chen as dancer Li’s mother.  This clip really gives you a sense of what you’re in for with this film, in terms of how bold it is.  [Make sure to read Joe Bendel’s LFM Review of Mao’s Last Dancer.]

Mao’s Last Dancer opens this Friday (8/20) in select theaters nationwide.  Predictably, the film has already been banned in China due to its highly unflattering look at the Mao years.

Word also comes today that Rex Reed, one of our favorite critics here at Libertas, has written a rave review of Dancer, calling it a “masterpiece.” I’ve excerpted at length from Reed’s review below:

“As I depart for my annual August vacation, I leave you with a highly recommended magical experience you must not miss. A giant hit at the 2009 Toronto Film Festival, Mao’s Last Dancer, by the great Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), is a feel-good film bursting with courage, energy and overwhelming inspiration … In the cherished tradition of heartbreaking movies about personal triumph against impossible odds, it is a combination of Billy Elliot and Rocky …

“At 19, granted unheard-of permission from Mao’s regime as one of the first exchange students to travel abroad, on a three-month student visa, in 1980, Li [the dancer and protagonist of the film] faces new hurdles. His parents expect him to bring honor to their humble station, his country expects him to represent China like a good, loyal and cynical comrade, drawing attention to Communism while trusting no one. Terrified and confused, he is the first boy from his province to travel to Beijing, much less the world beyond. Landing in the U.S. in a stiff, outdated, Chinese government-issued suit, he is like Dorothy arriving in Oz. Housed and guided by the kind but flamboyant Stevenson (wonderfully acted by the charismatic Bruce Greenwood), he takes little time overcoming culture shock, adjusting to alien Chinese restaurants and realizing that the Communist propaganda drummed into his head about America as a place of deprivation and darkness is a lot of hokum. The more he experiences of Texas cooking, kung fu movies, miraculous kitchen appliances, American hospitality and tennis shoes, the more distanced he grows from the ideals of Communism and the rigid dogma of Chairman Mao. (Against the rules of the Cultural Revolution, he also discovers the thrill of admiring political defectors like Nureyev and Baryshnikov without fear of arrest while watching forbidden tapes.) Capitalism, he confesses, is groovy …

“Distilling so much drama and turmoil into two hours is not easy, but by the time the film completes Li’s long and arduous journey, in 1986, when his parents are finally allowed to fly to the U.S. to see him dance for the first time, you will marvel at how much is accomplished. I predict the highly charged emotional finale will leave you cheering … Mao’s Last Dancer is a masterpiece.”

Click here for the entirety of Reed’s review.

Posted on August 19th, 2010 at 12:32pm.

Nikita Ads Called Too Sexy; Attacking the CIA? No Problem!

Too racy?

By Jason Apuzzo. We reported recently here at Libertas about how the CW’s reboot of the Nikita franchise will be making the CIA the villains of the piece.  So far as we’re aware, we’re the only site currently making a fuss over this.

Variety (registration required) is now reporting today that the show is currently turning heads for a different reason – namely, the raciness of it’s advertising.

At Libertas, of course, we dive right in to such controversies.

As I mentioned in my earlier post about this show, what alerted me to this show to begin with was a gigantic, eye-popping billboard of star Maggie Q slapped up against a building here in LA.  The poster was the already quite racy one of her in a red dress (see here).  Now, apparently, the people at CW are trying to get huge billboards of Maggie Q in leather and tattoos (see left) into major markets like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – and even here in LA not everybody’s going along with it.

Let me begin by stating the obvious: it would be spectacularly hypocritical of me to complain about the sexiness of this show’s advertising, given our regular featuring of pin-ups here at Libertas.  On the contrary: we love this sort of thing, as it speaks to the sort of freedoms we enjoy here in the West that are routinely frowned upon in totalitarian societies (both of the Islamo-fascist and communist variety) elsewhere in the world.

Plus, the girls look cute – which should be reason enough.

Cheerleaders.

With that said, even I think that putting up 50ft. billboards of Ms. Q in leather and tattoos in public places like malls, where families and children may gather, is probably a bit much.  And for safety reasons, I don’t think it’s too good of an idea to put these billboards near freeways.  The one of her in the red dress (see here) is more than enough to get the point across.

What bothers me more is that this new show apparently goes The Full Stallone in taking a nasty swipe at the CIA.  Why aren’t people more bothered by this?  Let me put it this way: why are we so prudish about the sex component to this series, yet so completely untroubled by what the show is depicting in terms of our own government?

Attacking our intelligence services is such a terrible idea at this point in time, as those services struggle under the combined weight of low morale, rampant anti-Americanism overseas and budget cutbacks.  And here’s another problem: shows like this do, eventually, get syndicated in foreign markets … and what kind of effect do you think they have, particularly among those already inclined toward hating America?  [Foreign distribution rights to Nikita have already been sold to the UK and Australia.]

Much as with The Expendables, I really wanted to like this show.  It had the potential of being a kind of sexed-up version of 24 – or a weekly Salt, if you will – and in fact that’s what the show should have been.  Instead, they had to make America’s intelligence services into the enemy, into ruthless murderers bent on assassination.  What a shame.

The only silver lining here, I suppose, is that the CW is giving us a better-looking show this fall called Hellcats.  The show is apparently based on the book, Cheer: Inside the Secret World of College Cheerleaders.  I’ve put the trailer for the show below.  This cheeky comedy-drama’s premise is described this way:

Hellcats revolves around Marti, a pre-law college student from the wrong side of the tracks. When budget cutbacks and her mother’s constant carelessness cause her to lose her scholarship, she joins the Hellcats, the college’s competitive cheerleading team.

Perfect!  A series about a young gal forced into a life of cheerleading due to tragic circumstances.  [Is Roger Corman running this network?]  Between the new terrorist-fighting Hawaii Five-O and this, I think we’re set now.

Posted on August 19th, 2010 at 11:33am.